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It's because they passed legislation which makes these products "illegal" to be sold in the United States. Like with anything that is sold "illegally" the DEA is coming in and shutting these websites down, especially with the (recent) increase of reports of negative (or life threatening) effects associated with these products.

There are always sites getting closed, and more often than not there are new ones opening. Just as there are always RC's getting banned and new analogues/entirely different chemicals taking their place. Although I do think that the whole RC scene is taking a hit from better legislation.

I have always wondered why America doesn't just start making more blanket bans, similar to the UK ban on all phenethylamines. Not that I want them to of course! I'd much rather the UK made them all legal

The primary concern is that with five synthetic cannabinoids (JWH-018, JWH-073, JWH-200, CP-47,497 and cannabicyclohexanol) on federal emergency schedule I (and likely to be permanently scheduled), US-based vendors selling analogues of these substances are vulnerable to prosecution under the Federal Analog Act. While many will say that the vendors are safe provided they put "Not for human consumption" stickers on everything and avoid "obvious" drug analogues, analogue law is deliberately vague and open to interpretation. We saw with Operation Web Tryp that many vendors who thought they were operating well within the bounds of the law ended up being convicted and serving substantial jail sentences. Nobody wants to be the test case in the courts, so the legal uncertainty has no doubt caused many vendors to cease trading. I don't believe the DEA have actively shut down any vendor as yet, but their looming presence is unsettling enough.

At the state level legislation is also rising to the challenges of the "designer drug" trade. The manufacturers and vendors have been extremely bull-headed by pushing product after product onto the shelves to immediately replace those that are banned, which creates a showdown between them and the lawmakers. As a result the legislatures are now starting to employ faster and broader law amendments to clamp down on the trade. Many states are now employing blanket bans that are heavily based upon the derivative laws used in the UK that Reuq refers to. This was pretty much unheard of in US state legislation 12 months ago. Again this creates some uncertainty. If a vendor isn't sure that their stock will remain uncontrolled from one month to the next then they are at risk of being stuck with stock they cannot sell and making big losses on it.

While it could be argued that legislation against cannabinoids is likely to prove ineffective, it certainly does dampen the market, so the number of sales will have declined from when the market was running rampant. Additionally during the boom of US sales lots and lots of amateur vendors sprung up, which diluted each vendor's market share further. As with any wholesale operation the profit margin is largely dictated by economies of scale. All these smaller fishes in the pond make a smaller margin on their products, and with a declining market and a climate of legal hostility, the meagre profits do not necessarily make the risk involved worthwhile. I suspect that many such vendors have shut up shop because they found that they weren't making the kind of money they expected.

So there's a lot of different issues interacting, but ultimately it boils down to an increasingly confrontational stance between suppliers and legislators, which leads to a market that is unsustainable. Discretion and long-term strategy are not attributes that the research chemical industry have figured out just yet.

Post Quality Evaluations:

Fantastic Explanation

as always, an excellent explanation of the interplay between supply and demand

I think it's too hot of of subject at the moment in many ways for people to take a chance at selling these things. I am pretty sure they will be somewhat available. The good thing about humaity is we both have a short memory and a short attention span. I am sure in time things will pick up again when the media forgets this was an issue.

To answer your question in short...ALL of the American based vendors have not completely shut down and ceased operations. With that being said, it's a lot harder than it used to be to secure quality RC's from an American based vendor. But even today, a person with a little inside knowledge would have more than a few options for securing RC's quickly and discreetly from an American based vendor.

without a clear analog chart of JWH destinations provided by scientist vendors have no resource to know what is or isn't an analog of an already illegal substance federally or all the additional substances listed on state bans.

This site is one of the better sources out there for info on RC's and yet there is not one here, neither is there one at wiki, which is odd because you can generally ask any chemist here and they will gladly tell you if one of the RC's is an analog of another or has structural similarity or not.....

Once again education (or in this case lack thereof) is the clincher.

jerm

jeremysdemo added 1 Minutes and 28 Seconds later...

some vendors are not shut down (there sites are purposefully down) as they have enough clients to continue business through emails, keeping their activity discrete.

Last edited by jeremysdemo; 05-11-2011 at 14:06.
Reason: Automerged Doublepost

They have not all shut down. I'm not sure why you think this. The fact that we can't discuss sources makes it a little difficult to figure out why you think this, but, for me anyway, numerous online vendors are still present...

However, I think Alertpay has recently suspended services to all RC vendors, which as caused difficulties for some vendors.

without a clear analog chart of JWH destinations provided by scientist vendors have no resource to know what is or isn't an analog of an already illegal substance federally or all the additional substances listed on state bans.

This site is one of the better sources out there for info on RC's and yet there is not one here, neither is there one at wiki, which is odd because you can generally ask any chemist here and they will gladly tell you if one of the RC's is an analog of another or has structural similarity or not.....

I think one needs to bear in mind that the prevalence of US based shops operating openly is a relatively new thing. Operation webtryp in 2004 really put an end to the nascent US rc sales scene. And I must say I think that the pre webtryp RC scene, which focused much more on potent psychedelics, seemed to understand the lesson that while many of these substances may not be explicitly banned, their "legal" status was very sketchy at best.

Fast forward a few years and we see an explosion of synthetic cannabinoids and the new wave of stimulants (mephedrone , mdpv). I think a couple of huge factors here where this brought in a lot of people, both on the consumer and retailer sides, who had little to no experience with RC's and had little if any knowledge of webtryp, and the lessons to be learned from it. I also think there was a comparatively huge amount of money to be made- potent psychedelics were always a niche market combated to cannabis (mimics) and stimulants. These were also cheaply producible drugs marketed against relatively expensive traditional drugs. (compared to potent psychedelics that ultimately had to compete with LSD- a traditionally very cheap, powerful, and long lasting substance)

Really- I am amazed that US vendors had the run they did, and think there was a unique blend of greed and ignorance at play. Sadly I think that many vendors and producers made a killing, while at the same time doing severe and lasting damage to the RC scene.

It saddens me that a rc scene that was just beginning to recover from webtryp got hijacked and run into the ground by those more interested in money then the potential some of these substances offered.